March 2, 2011 // 10:15 am - Sony's Senior Engineer John McCutchan at Developer Support has unveiled Move.Me at GDC 2011 which is a PlayStation 3 server application that allows anyone with a PS3 to experiment with motion controls and is officially sanctioned and supported by Sony Computer Entertainment.

To quote: John McCutchan, Senior Engineer with SCEA's Developer Support team, here to tell you about an exciting initiative we're unveiling for PlayStation Move during GDC this week.

Later today, I'll be giving a presentation on Move.Me, a new software application that provides academics and hobbyists access to PlayStation Move's technology, enabling them to create entirely new applications using a PC, the Move motion controller, the PlayStation Eye, and the power of the PlayStation 3 system.

We know many of you might not be able to make the trek to San Francisco for the show, so we wanted to give you a quick overview of Move.Me here.

When we launched PlayStation Move last September, we knew it would set a new benchmark for precision in motion controlled gaming. Even before PlayStation Move was publicly available to all of you, we were talking about the device's potential implications for academics and researchers.

While visiting conferences like Games for Health and SIGGRAPH last year, these same researchers and academics expressed strong interest in utilizing PlayStation Move's cutting edge technology for their own purposes. Move.Me is the result of these conversations, and is an opportunity for PlayStation to inspire new, revolutionary applications in other fields beyond gaming.

So, what exactly is Move.Me? In short, Move.Me is a server application that runs on the PS3 system. It allows anyone with a PS3 to experiment with motion controls and is officially sanctioned and supported by Sony Computer Entertainment.

Move.Me sends the complete state of the PlayStation Move and navigation controllers to the PC, giving you the exact same data that licensed developers typically have access to.

What does this mean to you? We see Move.Me as an opportunity to satisfy the need for new, innovative interactive technology in fields like academia, healthcare, and more, as well as to support new developers and inspire applications that we could never have imagined.

We hope it will be used to discover new ways of connecting individuals with information, and maybe even discovering a new healthcare application or two. We know that some of you out there are aspiring software developers yourselves and we're eager to see what kinds of applications Move.Move inspires. Maybe an aspiring developer like you will create the next big thing with PlayStation Move!

Sony's Move.me = fail, the only way to use this is to have the PS3 act as a server. Obviously this is to prevent people from hacking directly into the system and learning it's secrets. But in the process, Sony makes everything 10x more inefficient and cumbersome.

Kinect's open source drivers are NATIVE windows/linux drivers which means that developers get direct access to the hardware without an inbetween "server".

If developers had to choose between the two systems, its obvious which is going to win.

Oh and another thing - why the hell would you want to have a PS3 running as a server just to use Move? Surely they would have been better off providing USB (eye) & Bluetooth (Move controller) drivers for the PC, thus removing the restriction of requiring a PS3 too - oh yeah, greed (i mean sony) again

I guess Sony don't want anyone to write applications solely for the PC, but then again open source drivers for the PS eye and Move are already in the wild for the PC lol.

I was tempted to try use the the PSeye and move for a little project i'm working on now (kinect was a little too bulky) for uni but instead just went for a beagleboard and 2 webcams because it was cheaper and they're a lot less likely to randomly sue me and confiscate my equipment because they aren't fans of my project or simply don't understand it.

Sony just like to pretend that they help the small time developers and students but I don't think they're fooling anyone anymore.

I agree with the comments about this being too little too late, but its good to see a move (if somewhat at knife point) in the right (ish) direction.

Personally i can't wait to see Kinect+Move homebrew apps on the PS3 (unrestricted by greed... erm i mean Sony of course).

Oh and another thing - why the hell would you want to have a PS3 running as a server just to use Move? Surely they would have been better off providing USB (eye) & Bluetooth (Move controller) drivers for the PC, thus removing the restriction of requiring a PS3 too - oh yeah, greed (i mean sony) again